No, you perverts! I’m not pondering the latest love triangle presented in the most recent Twilight film. :P

What I am talking about though is choosing how to gear up. Largely, I am curious on how many people pass over upgrades waiting for that one item they desperately want to drop.

Why am I curious about this? Well, because we are starting to see a lot of things that I believe to be upgrades for folks head to the shard bin and I want to know why. I suspect it is because people would rather have item x and don’t want to have other loot on their record that might prevent them from obtaining the sought out item when it does drop.

For example, I picked up a ring last night from the gunship battle that was a very minor upgrade to my 258 ring, but an upgrade nonetheless. I had known that it was somewhere on my list of “good things” to pick up at some point, but previously we had seen lots of interest from our DPS casters trying to nab it up, so I had largely just written it off figuring I’d wait for the ring from Sindragosa at some point down the line that itemized spirit over crit.

Imagine my surprise last night when the ring was in the chest and nobody sent a tell requesting the item. I thought to myself “well, I’m sure not going to let it just rot”, and so I picked it up. But then I got to thinking, why had nobody asked for it? I mean, I know that it’s a very well itemized ring for caster dps having haste, crit and spell power. But what had all of the sudden made it so undesirable that where I had 5 tells on it the first time we saw it, I had zero tells on it the third time?

I suspect the answer is pretty simple: Coveted Loot.

People sometimes seem to set their eye on that one item that shines so bright it blinds them from acquiring other things that would be upgrades for them. While this is all fine and good, it really starts to irk me when people let things go to the shard bin that would have been an upgrade, and that they will in fact ask for the next time it drops after they have obtained their coveted item.

To be fair, I also set my loot priorities, and when things drop I will prioritize when I ask for them, but I also won’t let anything be sharded that is on my list and is an upgrade for me. That just seems wasteful and silly!

So I am curious! Do you hold out or do you take your upgrades as they come? Would you let an upgrade shard just to have a better chance at something down the road?

11 responses to “Holding Out”

Oh, I’m definitely one of those “hold out” types – our guild uses a dkp system where we get one point per boss kill, and when we get a main spec item, our points drop back down to zero. I held out for a long, long time for the dps caster trinket to drop from Anub in ToC 25 – upgrade after upgrade dropped every week, and there was actually one guy that got three upgrades in a row because obviously, everyone else was holding out for the one thing they really wanted.

It finally did drop after weeks and weeks – for a long time, I was riding high at the top of the dkp charts with several weeks’ worth of points more than the next highest person. It was torture, especially when the trinket dropped again the very next week and someone nabbed it for about four dkp (when I had spent over 30). But was it worth it? Heck yea.

I vowed not to do it for ICC, but I was having internet troubles on the weeks that several things on my “list” dropped and I wasn’t able to raid. I ended up on the top of the dkp list after that, and couldn’t help it – why waste points on a minor upgrade, especially that many points, when I could get a coveted item that everyone wants? I still had my list, and I still didn’t want to hold out for #1 on the list (caster trinket from Rotface – and we have not killed Rotface yet, let alone Festergut), so when the dagger from Marrowgar dropped two nights ago (#3 on my list), I won it. I’m now down at the bottom and missed out not only on the dps caster neck off of Gunship, but the first priest tier token that has dropped for our guild in ICC.

It was still worth it.

So I definitely, definitely see both sides. My guild leader says “you’ll get more loot if you bid early and often,” which is 100% true. But if there are certain items where there will be a lot of competition (weapons, trinkets, capes), I can see the point in holding on to the dkp.

There’s a melee dps that won a trash drop the very first time we went into ICC – it dropped off of trash in front of Deathwhisper. So he had zero points, while everyone else had one. For the next several weeks, all the other plate melee dps were fortunate enough to get the 2H axe off of Marrowgar. That poor plate dps whines to me every single time something drops that is an upgrade. No one is making him hoard his dkp, though. I know he wants the axe, but he’s way at the top of the dkp list now, afraid to spend his points because he knows (like I do) that the second he spends his points, then Marrowgar will drop his axe the very next time and one of the other few melee dps will get it for 2 dkp over his 1 dkp, or something.

I think that ultimately, you (and my GM) are right – spend the points on anything that drops that’s on your list. Don’t spend the points on frivilous things that are not on your list even though they are a higher ilvl (I originally bid on that Val’kyr staff off of Deathwhisper, but traded it to the next highest points person because I knew that I was just getting overexcited, and that it wasn’t on my list due to it not being a great upgrade).

And of course, there’s always the fact that this is the expansion’s last raid – everything you want will eventually drop and you’ll eventually either get it, or you won’t need it because the expansion’s out.

It depends. Generally I’ll just take the upgrade, because a bird in the hand… right? Here are a couple of exceptions:

1. Right now I’m wearing a craptacular cloak that has Spellpower and Crit on it. I’d like to get something with a bit of haste instead. So when a cloak drops that has spellpower and crit, even if it’s an upgrade, meh. It doesn’t really “do it” for me because I’ll swap out that sucker for a cloak with haste on it as soon as I can.

2. I also need to upgrade my belt. It is spellpower/haste and I want MOAR SPELLPAUR/HASTE! A belt dropped the other night with spellpower/crit that was an upgrade, but I passed on it to the other druid – because I know that there’s a badge belt available with spellpower/haste on it, which I will pick up as soon as I get enough frost badges. It would be a waste of gear for me to take the stupid crit belt when I’m planning on a replacement that is not dependent on the RNG.

3. I would consider passing on loot that is a slight upgrade if it would give me a greater chance at the “hotly contested” loot. I don’t have much competition for healing leather. However, if I don’t “build up” some points, I won’t have a chance in hell of ever winning an item usable by multiple classes – trinkets, necklaces, rings, cloaks, weapons, etc. (Not necessarily a specific item, but any sort of upgrades in those classes.)

That said, I hate to see upgrades be sharded, so I’m more likely to hold out and pass on the above items if there’s someone in the raid who wants and can use them. I’m more likely to break down and take the stupid thing if it’s about to be sharded.

In some ways yes, some no.
Now I have fully decided which 4 pieces of t10 I’m going to pick up (2 down, 2 to go), I won’t be rolling on gloves or legs.
Unfortunately it was after our ICC10 yesterday where I picked up the leggings of unrelenting blood that I was going to be replacing them with the tier ones.
I am gagging for a cloak, belt or neck piece though! Be grabbing those as soon as I can.
I am lucky, I guess, in that I am our only raiding tree. I am guaranteed to get stuff if it drops, as long as it doesn’t lean the way of the moonkin!

As a fulltime boomkin, I’m lucky enough to be one of 2-4 consistent caster druids in guild (I think we have 6, but the amount on any given night varies a fair bit); there’s not a huge amount of competition for a lot of the leather spellpower pieces. At the moment I’m settling for taking upgrades that drop.. I’ll pass on small upgrades if other people are interested, but I’d rather take one if no one else is than see it get sharded. Might I replace it long-term? Sure – but I also won’t take pieces I’m expecting to upgrade out of 10/badges. I’ve picked up 2-3 pieces since we started pushing hard into ICC25, and the dagger off Marrowgar was the only contested one.

My feeling at the moment towards tokens is that they can wait. Would they be nice? Absolutely. Is it worth it, to me, to pick up a token and shoot any chance I have at general caster pieces for awhile? Not really. I was middling-to-last to get upgraded tier in TOC, but my willingness to wait is probably what let me get Reign one of the few times it drops.. choices, choices.

This does happen in point systems with unfortunate frequency. It is ultimately detrimental to the raid as a whole, and is the reason why some Serious Business guilds use loot council (or loot dictatorship as it often ends up) so that they as a whole can progress faster than capitalistic DKP-based guilds.

There are many ways to attempt to avoid this. One that may work for you is this: for certain “coveted” items (pretty easy to figure out which ones they are…DBW, TAJ, AAbacus, that marrowgar axe, etc…) set a “fixed dkp price”. Then, when it drops, anyone who wants the trinket who has sufficient DKP may /random for it. (You may also restrict the item based on raid attendance/class–eg, DBW isn’t phenomenal for all classes, so you might restrict some to DBW and some to TAJ)

Then, the winner spends the minimum DKP required to “win” the item up to a maximum of all his DKP.

This way, your solid raiders won’t stock all their DKP for this one item–they’ll have a “floor” of DKP that they’ll want to keep so that they have the right to /random for it, but not be afraid to pick up other upgrades if they don’t win it for a while. At the same time, you aren’t “fixing” the price of the item, so the item doesn’t quickly become underpriced when dkp starts to inflate–it’ll still cost all your DKP if you aren’t the roller with the most DKP saved.

Anyway, there are plenty of different approaches you can use to incentivise your raiders to loot up both in a way that benefits them personally and the raid as a whole.

I take my upgrades as they come. I find DKP hoarding really irritating, and counterproductive to raid progression. I’ve seen it happen a lot too. People make a BiS list and don’t bid on anything else, even if it is a significant upgrade. If an item increases your healing/damage/survivability even a little, it is much more useful to the raid than an abyss crystal. (Of course I’m not advocating taking tiny upgrades over someone who needs the item more – just over a DE).

My viewpoint could very well be biased. As the only caster druid in my raid I don’t have much competition. However, I would never watch all the leather gear get DE’d just so I could be first in line for a weapon or trinket.

I think it really depends on how your guild handles loot. When I was in a DKP type guild in the past, I horded my points. However for the last couple of years, the guild I’m in handles loot through a loot council. When I joined the guild, I was pessimistic about how it would work, but I’ve rarely had even the slightest complaint and I never find myself passing on even the slightest upgrade.

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